A Custom Approach for Higher Education
Digital Transformation is more than just integrating and upgrading digital technology or moving to the cloud. It requires a cultural change that enables organizations to experiment, challenge approaches, fail, and learn—enabling them to improve over time.
Transformation challenges are more pronounced in the field of higher education. Institutions of higher learning typically need to close a much wider digital relevance gap than organizations that have the full investment, urgency, and backing of their executive teams. Internal and external customers are demanding quicker outcomes, more data to enhance decision-making, and improved user experiences all while dealing with budget cuts and fewer staff to support it all.
Adding to these challenges, it is not uncommon to see dysfunction and distrust within the ranks of higher education senior leadership, and silos between teams and departments.
Transparency + alignment = true digital transformation
At Higher Digital, we’ve seen these patterns repeated over and over, and the solution is always the same: foster a new culture of transparency and alignment, where both executive leadership and technology managers partner, compromise, and move forward—together. They collaborate and prioritize the importance of consistently delivering solutions that their customers need.
We believe that such alignment is a critical step toward achieving true digital transformation. This is why we created our own digital transformation model: Simplified Enterprise Agile™ or (SEA)Change, a highly customizable process that brings teams together, addresses the needs of the entire organization, and leads higher education institutions on their own successful digital transformation journeys.
(SEA)Change Model
The (SEA)Change Model is a business-first model that simplifies the process of prioritization and communication, from enterprise goals through product delivery. This light-weight and easy to implement model:
- Adapts to your organizational structure;
- Leverages current technology investments;
- Provides actionable and immediate impact; and
- Tightens alignment between leadership and development.
(SEA)Change forms the basis of Higher Digital's consulting practice , allowing us to deliver real improvements quickly and inexpensively. It also underpins our more specialized engagement options.
How it works
The (SEA)Change Model is an agile approach to managing change within your organization. Leveraging the spirit of Lean Agile methods, (SEA)Change harnesses the most effective practices from the several common frameworks and dispenses with those that are less relevant to higehr education. (SEA)Change is highly adaptable to any environment, leverages the tools and structures you’ve already invested in, and requires no specialized training or certifications.
Organizations that use (SEA)Change–including innovative schools like Southern New Hampshire University and American University–have quickly experienced measureable positive results.
Case Studies
Many of our clients start out by implementing (SEA)Change within a specific department or division, then expand their efforts more broadly once that first team has achieved positive results. When other groups within an organization see such rapid progress delivering value, their doubt becomes opportunistic encouragement. They realize that digital transformation isn’t necessarily as hard as they thought it would be—and opt to try this approach for their set of stakeholders.
To learn more about our process, please read the (SEA)Change white paper written by Higher Digital Founder and COO, Colleen E. Baker.
